


There In The Water

by tirraterra



Category: Fate/Zero, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Caster!Harry, Crossover, Extremely concerned Servants, F/F, F/M, Holy Grail War rules are a nebulous thing, Horrible Things Happening To Everyone, Horrible things happening to children, M/M, Massive Carnage, Parallel Universes, The Author takes liberties, The Holy Grail War, Uryuu Ryuunosuke's Appetites, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-28
Updated: 2014-05-28
Packaged: 2018-01-26 21:12:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1702688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tirraterra/pseuds/tirraterra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A child hero is a hero nonetheless. Uryuu Ryuunosuke summons an entirely different Servant  during the Fourth Holy Grail War.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There In The Water

For as long as Harry could remember, he had held a very close association with dust. This was due in large part to his daily routine, which was primarily filled with cleaning the house under his Aunt’s imperious command from the time he woke up to sometimes late in the evening. Occasionally, however, Harry couldn’t help but think that dust seemed to too often make up a larger part of his life than one would surmise the unholy particles should, in the grand scheme of an average person’s existence. 

The most immediate evidence to support this suspicion, of course, would be that he could pinpoint dust as the primary culprit in bringing about his abrupt and messy death at the age of ten.

 

* * *

 

When Harry got up for the day, it was generally at his Aunt Petunia’s beckoning, which was delivered by a sharp rapping at the thin wooden door of his cupboard and her voice emerging testily through the vents. The first sight he received would always be the small room’s halo of dust motes backlit by the hard white hallway lights, which the middle-aged housewife had just flipped on, streaming in through the cracks of the vent. The pale gold specks hovered about his tiny, darkened world for as long as it took him to climb off the floor cot and put on his glasses, at which point he’d push open the now unlatched, angled door that formed one of the four walls of his bedroom and leave the floating motes behind.

Even outside his cupboard, however, the dust was a bit of an omnipotent and mysterious force that seemed to lurk wherever he went. He kept the house very clean, near spotless for a modern building of the current era under his Aunt’s predatory guidance and whip-like scowl, so the main rooms featured none of the dirty substance for longer than a few hours if someone managed to track some in from the outside world. The storage closet, however, and the expansive, tightly packed garage attached to the house’s east side all held a composite of dust absent in the rest of the house. 

Harry visited all of these spaces often. After starting breakfast on the stove immediately upon exiting his cupboard in the mornings, and laying out the dishware in preparation for the second, more sluggish half of the family’s arrival to the downstairs in a few hours, Harry would make his first trip to the largest hallway closet. It was bigger even than his bedroom, and filled to the ceiling with odorous cleaners and liquids that burned his eyes and nose when he used them, while underneath the shelves boxes of rags, steel wool, sponges and buckets were stored. Wall attachments held nearly a dozen different mops and brooms, and despite the narrow closet’s frequent usage as the main cleaning center of the household, it was consistently covered with a fine layer of dust wherever it could settle on a surface. 

From this closet Harry would make hasty trips back to and from the kitchen for the rest of the day. The kitchen and dining room had to be re-cleaned every morning because of the evening meal, which always left a residual mess impossible to remove during the quick cleanup Harry performed after it was finished, and his Uncle’s frequent late night scotches prevented anything more exhaustive than that. Hence, mornings before breakfast were the time to repair the last remnants of damage from the previous day, which involved washing the counters and surfaces, a second floor sweep and the inevitable window dusting, whose frames had dutifully collected tiny gray grains overnight. Harry did all of this in-between keeping the toast unburnt and the eggs of the right consistency on the stove; an easy task after several years of the responsibility, and by the end of it would be permitted to quickly devour his piece of unbuttered toast in peace.

Once breakfast had been finished, it was already three or four hours into the day for both Harry and his aunt. Petunia would at this point start issuing more direct commands to begin specific tasks, such as washing the linens (if it was a Saturday), vacuuming the floors, cleaning the windows, cleaning the stovetops, swapping out the drapes, dusting the china kept on display for guests (if she was hosting the tea this week), and returning the formal sitting room to pristine condition (in the common occurrence that Dudley had decided to use it as a battleground for his action figures). Then, if it was a weekend or during the school year, lunch would have to be prepared—any other day Harry would be given a slice of bread and Petunia would eat a snack barely more substantial than that. Normally lunch consisted of a soup and sandwich ordeal with a plethora of crisps to placate Dudley’s preferences. It was by far the least complex meal, seeing as the dominant males in the house were satisfied with thickly stacked cold cuts and a heavy bowl of soup. It was also Harry’s most substantial meal, where he could normally get away with a solid slab of meat placed between two half slices.

Then the outdoor work would be undertaken, flowerbeds weeded, lawn mowed, deck swept, lawn chairs brushed off in case of collected natural debris—the neighbors at Number Six kept, in Petunia’s opinion, shamefully unmaintained trees that occasionally deposited leaves in their yard during the fall—and gutters cleared. This was all done by Harry, who was trusted only with the most basic of yard work by Aunt Petunia. She herself managed the aesthetic upkeep of the gardens themselves, which were firmly orthodox affairs made up of mostly apathetic domesticated primroses and rather standoffish tulips. The outdoor activities did not contribute much to Harry’s intimate relationship with dust, though the shed filled with gardening implements did.

The beginning descent of the sun behind Number Eight’s rooftop signaled the preparation of dinner, which was planned out for the week every Sunday and shopped for accordingly. The meal adhered strictly to Aunt Petunia’s ideas of traditional complementary foods for the proper middle-class household, and often included some form of beef, whether roasted, stewed, or baked into a pie. Petunia lead the cooking of the evening meals, and Harry served as mostly a cutter of vegetables and stirrer of boiling and simmering pots. At the start of dinner Harry was placed back in his cupboard with a slice of bread and a plastic cup of water, an edict set out by Uncle Vernon many years earlier under his assertion that Harry’s presence during such an important meal was disruptive of the family atmosphere.

He would be let out at the end of the meal to hastily wash the dishes and wipe down the table, and, if it was a Tuesday or a Thursday, bathe quickly in the guest bathroom upstairs, which had a small shower. He would then return to be locked in his cupboard as the rest of the family fell into pre-bedtime activities such as watching the evening news, where he would remain until morning.

 

* * *

 

Harry’s shoulder hit the door with a sharp thud, the rest of his body crumpling lower to the ground after the momentum had run out. His legs folded one underneath the other as he struggled to turn himself into the wall, chin tucked down and now rapidly bruising shoulder awkwardly wedged high against the crown molding around the cupboard’s door. 

There was a heave as Uncle Vernon stumbled into the hallway table, picture frames crashing against its legs and tumbling onto the carpet. Harry didn’t dare look up from his hunched position on the ground when he heard the man’s foot crack into the glass of one frame. The older man was cursing loudly, mouth clumsily forming around the words, and he had to lean once into the wall Harry had curled up against to catch himself. His lack of coordination didn’t hinder his strength, however, and the foot that lashed out caught the small boy’s hip and threw him sideways onto his stomach, cheek pressed into the floor.

Harry scrambled slightly at the thick carpeting under his numbed and exhausted fingers and made to get onto his knees, a movement made difficult by his body’s unwillingness to lift his head or shoulders off ground level. Fear wracked his chest and his limbs trembled violently as he wriggled further from the swaying form of his guardian, who now loomed close enough to partially block the artificial sconce light lining the hall.

Vernon pushed himself up from where he was leaning against the side of the wall when he spotted Harry’s minute movements, and small beady eyes narrowed sluggishly as the man seemed to deliberate the distance between where he now stood hazily and where the tiny form had crumpled from his earlier kick. He finally settled on lugging forward a final half a meter and bringing his free foot down staunchly onto the boy’s femur.

Harry’s last thought before a horrible snapping sound sent him into unconsciousness was that the baseboards were covered with a grime he had never noticed previously, which had gotten under his fingernails as he had attempted to lever himself away from the man who was his uncle. Then there was agony that seemed to run up from his big toe to his fingertips and the back of his skull, and then there was nothing at all.

 

* * *

 

When he woke back up, it was to Aunt Petunia’s scowl and her rail thin hand shaking his shoulder awake. When she saw his eyes start to flutter open, she shifted her grip to his forearm and hauled him upwards (hardly a feat of strength), half-carrying his gasping, shuddering body up the stairs to the second floor and depositing him in the guest bathroom. 

She pressed him firmly into the shower stall, twisted the nozzle far to the right, and shut the sheer glass door. Harry only allowed himself to sink to the bottom of the small cubicle after her steps leading away from the room had faded completely.

He half-curled at the base of the shower for several minutes, lukewarm water pounding over his fully clothed form and washing trails of rust across the porcelain and down the drain. The small boy’s head tilted down into his chest several times as he drifted in and out of consciousness, before coming to a still rest against one of the walls.

 

* * *

 

When he woke up a second indeterminate amount of time later, the shower was still running. His clothes, heavy with water, seemed to bear down on him with an intolerable weight. He attempted to test his ability to move, which had him retching helplessly for several seconds until he could shift both his head and shoulders without nausea.

He struggled to peel off Dudley’s huge, threadbare t-shirt, which had escaped the evening’s incident unscathed but now bore dark, ominous patches along its front and back that the shower had been unable to completely wash out. The water, which had been running clear since Harry’s second emergence into consciousness, went red again at the garment’s removal, the now chilling liquid running freely through the fabric and pulling the last of the blood (and what smelled like scotch) from its thin folds.

The pants were more difficult to get off, especially with his hands going numb from the now truly icy temperature, and Harry gazed in revulsion at the strange angle protruding from his pale spindly leg which the removal of the cloth had better revealed, as though someone had wedged a toy block under his skin. Instead of staring long, which he had learned just made him feel sicker, he turned to reach tentatively above his head, grasping clumsily for the hard soap Petunia allowed him to keep on the little shelf for his use. It was scentless stuff, but it removed the most stubborn smears of dried blood and any remnants of Vernon’s earlier meal and drink reliably, so Harry applied himself to the task of scrubbing his entire body into a reassuringly sterile froth without antagonizing the ruined bone in his leg or his still sensitive stomach.

By the time he was able to gather up the strength to leave the shower and half-crawl to the pain killers, disinfectant and bandage wraps Petunia had left beside the edge of the bathroom’s door, the strangely-angled bone in his leg had tugged itself back to straightness, and the black spots that appeared in his vision when he put weight on it no longer threatened to waylay him into total darkness. The small window set on the adjacent wall of the show showed a gleaming moon and dark sky. He could hear from across the upstairs’ longer hallway Vernon’s loud snores and knew that his Aunt must have woken the man up from whatever comatose state he had probably stumbled into after cracking open his nephew’s leg bone and shifted him to the master bedroom. 

His ratty towel was where he had left it, tucked carefully under the sink, and he wrapped it around himself gratefully and perched on the toilet seat’s rim. The bathroom door had been shut when the water was hot, so the AC that blasted through the house during the summer nights had a minor effect on the temperature of the tiny room. Harry huddled on the seat with the towel bunched up around his shoulders until his muscles seemed more willing to obey him. By then his leg was straight and purpling. 

He picked up the first bottle of what he recognized as acetaminophen, pressing tightly over the lid. It popped off and he fished out three oblong pills. He leaned over the sink and filled his mouth with water, then quickly pressed each pill between his lips and swallowed. What was left was a reassuring flavor of bitterness and grit. 

The bandage wraps were next, arranged in two small rolls. Petunia, who knew quite well that a broken leg would fix itself within the day, left them anyway so that Harry could display some visible sign of injury to placate her husband’s morning after sensibilities. He swooped one bandage loosely around his shin and tugged until it ran flat, stretching from ankle to just below the knee. He layered over it with the second roll until his leg was swathed thickly and tucked the ends in.

The disinfectant got pattered lightly over his cheeks, stinging, and his right shoulder, burning, and finally the whole right side of his ribcage, which had a deep scrape that ran down his side from being kicked up against the molding. That cut hurt, and Harry had to sit very still for a moment and bite his lipped before the sensation passed. 

He salvaged his clothes from the now quiet shower. They were still bloated with water, so he wrung them out in the sink until they were chalky and twisted. Then he eased open the door, clutching the clothes to his chest and the towel around his shoulders, one foot fumbling when pain radiated up the leg, and crept over to the landing and down the stairs and into his cupboard.

 

* * *

 

Petunia woke him up late the next morning—nearly a half hour. She gave him a glass of water, too, and let him sip on it as he turned on the stove. The dishware was placed out, counters wiped down, and floor swept again. This morning required a thicker broom than he normally used to remove the fine motes of scattered along the edges of the counter. Finally Vernon and Dudley both emerged from the higher floor to begin breakfast. Harry made sure to limp clearly for his uncle while still managing not to jostle anything being brought to the table. 

“Pet!” Vernon announced as the bacon truly began to look scarce near the end of the meal. “Did I tell you yesterday about Michaels and his new contractor?” 

“No dear.” Petunia responded demurely from across him, incessantly swirling her single glass of grapefruit juice in lieu of drinking it. “Is Michaels with your company?”

“God no! Rat of a man would never survive a day in an honest business. No, no, Pet, he’s a freelancer we hired last season to dig up some minor mechanical bits we’re using on two of our—ah—new models.” 

The man leaned back and rubbed his full abdomen thoughtfully. “A real charmer. Always pulls out his fancy cigarettes whenever the boss comes around.” Vernon looked like he might prefer to spit but didn’t dare to at the breakfast table. He crammed the second to last slice of bacon between his lips as a compromise. His large voice came out muffled around the crumbling piece of food. “The thing is, Pet, this Michaels did an okay job last year, got the stuff in on time. Not a man I’d bring back for dinner, but maybe I’d share a drink with him or two at the pub. So this last week we brought him in for a contract lookover. Wanted to take him on for another season, see?” 

Vernon paused to consider the bacon plate, but Dudley grappled for the last slice from across the table with surprisingly alacrity, and the older man sullenly resorted to another helping of hashbrowns instead. “So Michaels comes into the office, right, and I’m there with the boss—Travers, Pet, he and his wife came over last New Years, remember?—and the man’s all giddy-up about something. So he sits on down and Travers and I start winding up our business when he gets a phone call. Michaels takes it right there in the office, doesn’t even bother stepping into the hall, just snaps his mobile out right— _BOY!"_

Petunia startled so badly she dropped her juice. It shattered across the floor and up the chair legs, a froth of light pink. Dudley, who had devoured the bacon and moved on to sopping up egg yolk from his plate with a bit of toast, jerked violently. The table rattled and the small vase of primroses set at the table edge that Petunia insisted upon fell sideways and spread water and petals across the wood.

Harry looked over the kitchen counter at his uncle in confusion and opened his mouth to apologize—for what, he didn’t know—when a wave of warmth bubbled past his teeth. He choked and brought his hands up quickly to his mouth, watching as red spilled through his cupped fingers and down his forearms. The liquid was cold by the time it splattered across the tile at his feet. 

Then Petunia screamed and Vernon was up in an instant, lifting Harry up by his shoulders and hauling him through the hallway. The man grappled for one moment for his wallet on the hall table and Petunia, who had jumped up only seconds after she had cried out, threw open the hall closet, dug the leather packet out of a coat pocket and crammed it into his palm. Wallet in hand, Vernon paused at the front door to look down at his nephew’s face. He jerked his eyes away. 

“Pet!” He roared. “Get in the car!” 

Petunia nodded shakily, yanking on her heels and looking anywhere but at the boy hanging from her husband’s grasp whose front was darkening every passing second. Vernon wrestled the boy into the backseat of the company car, though Petunia looked like she might be sick when she realized the resulting state of the upholstery. Instead she took the passenger’s side and clicked her safety belt shut, eyes firmly forward, and after a moment Vernon swung himself into the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut.

“Hospital.” Vernon narrated hoarsely to himself as he jabbed the keys into the ignition and started the vehicle. There was a sudden wet sound from behind him and Petunia’s white grip on the seat tightened. 

“Drive.” She hissed.

They pulled out of the driveway and away from the house.

 

* * *

 

In the back seat Harry felt his throat close up and hauled himself up against the window. His limps trembled, knees cracking together and hands slipping off the varnished wood siding of the car door. There was a slick substance under his shirt and in the creases of his elbows, and his hands gleamed. His nail tips were black. Against the window the thick liquid looked more like watercolor and he could watch the houses zip passed under the transparent red smears. 

Something burbled up in the back of his throat. He smothered a cough.

They hit a bump in the road crossing over train tracks. Harry’s skull cracked against the window and he bounced back, dazed, before sinking down onto the seat. He grappled for the windowsill but the car’s design was rounded and they slid off. Nose pressed into the seat joint, Harry lay helplessly and tried to ignore the metal taste seeping over his gums and across his tongue and dripping into the corners of his eyes. His glasses had been thrown off somewhere in the passage between the breakfast table to car. He could make out his uncle’s labored breathing in front of him through the car’s motions. His aunt was perfectly silent. 

There was another bump and the car jolted. Harry’s stomach churned and he made another effort to sit back up, bracing his knees into the seat. His head got as far up as the window’s edge before nausea made him freeze in place. 

And then Vernon took the sedan over a curb with a clunk, and a plume of dust burst up from the upholstery’s joints right as Harry tried to suck in air through his nose, lips sealed against a mouthful of metal. The small boy’s throat spasmed helplessly and he sneezed, splattering red across the window. 

Aunt Petunia screamed then, a sharp, bracing sound, and Harry’s hands slipped again on the sill and grappled with the door handle, and there was a deep _schnick_ as the handle clocked in and the car door opened. Harry, already leaning, fell forward until his skull made contact with the cement street spinning below him. There was very little else for the circumstances to do but spread him out across several long meters of asphalt.

**Author's Note:**

> The concept is to preserve the feeling of 'outsiders' that Ryuunosuke and the original Caster had during the canon Fourth Holy Grail War. Hence, a child character, thrown into the fighting of a bunch of very noble Heroic Spirits, commanded by a serial killer with a taste for children. Harry's Noble Phantasms are something I am especially looking forward to introducing, because I oriented them to fit a child's design (as well as the BWL's). 
> 
> Let me know if it's worth continuing.  
> (And also if my sentences are too f*cking long to understand)


End file.
